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HAIL, CAESAR! (review)

Review by Benn Robbins
Produced by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen,
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner
Written and Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney,
Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill,
Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton,
Channing Tatum, Alison Pill, Christopher Lambert,
David Krumholtz, Fisher Stevens, Clancy Brown,
Robert Picardo, Dolph Lundgren

The long awaited film Hail, Caesar! from four-time Oscar-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen is absolutely perfect.

I can’t remember the last time I sat in a movie theater and laughed till my sides hurt and tears poured out of my face. At times I laughed that laugh where no sound comes out and I nearly sent myself into an asthma attack.

Reminding me of their earlier comedies, Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Hail, Caesar! is a beautiful homage to a bygone era known as “The Golden Age of Hollywood”.

Set in the 1950’s and with television all the rage, big studios like the Capitol Pictures must have the biggest, brightest, and most popular stars in their films. The sets are bigger, production values soar along with the cost and with this comes turmoil. Stars get into trouble and all sorts of predicaments occur for directors and producers.

That is where Eddie Mannix steps in.

Mannix was a real-life Hollywood executive producer and studio “fixer”. Here the Coen’s Ersatz Mannix takes center stage in a fictitious and and glorified movie land. Josh Brolin, seen previously in Coen films No Country For Old Men and True Grit, has his third outing with the brother’s Coen and is a treat to behold. He is brilliant as he tries to balance family, his job, and the problems of the world, all while trying to quit smoking.

When Baird Whitlock, the studio’s superstar, vanishes before completing work on the biggest biblical epic they’ve has ever produced, Mannix must discover how, why, and where Whitlock has disappeared to.  All this while trying to both run a film studio and putting out smaller business emergencies.

The Coen Bros have lovingly recreated a time when the studio system ruled LA and everything was larger than life. Hail, Caesar! is a love letter to Hollywood. How apt that it should be released so close to Valentine’s Day.

Pulling together a ridiculously talented and amazing cast, as always, The Coen’s don’t disappoint.

Along with Brolin is George Clooney as the hapless, Baird

Alden Ehrenreich plays the cowboy turned dramatist Hobie Doyle. He has one of the funniest scenes with Ralph Fiennes as posh English director Lawrence Laurentz.

The ensemble also includes Scarlett Johansson as the water-ballet mermaid, Esther Williams-esque, DeeAnna; Jonah Hill as the meepish “Most reliable man on the planet” and fully bonded, Joe. Coen film alum and Academy Award winning actress Frances McDormand is perfection as the chain-smoking, no-nonsense film editor, C.C. Calhoun and Tilda Swinton is hilarious in a duel role as identical and competing sister reporters, Thora and Thessaly Thacker.

Finally, Channing Tatum is sublime. He once again shows he doesn’t take himself too seriously and has slowly won a small place in my heart as the tap dancing and singing sailor who isn’t at all what he seems, Burt Gurney.  

As with most Coen films, the cast of supporting characters is varied, talented and never underused. They help flesh out the world that exists in the Coen’s mind and each one is perfectly cast and riotous as well.

As I said previously, the film is a wonderful homage to Hollywood of yore. It is also a bittersweet reminder to a time when the country was on the brink of the Red Scare. McCarthyism was knocking, the shine chrome of the Donna Reed and Ozzie and Harriet era was about to tarnish and the innocence of a country is about to be shockingly torn asunder.

Never only about one thing, Joel and Ethan Coen’s films are layers and layers of filmmaking and stories. All the laughter and all the rumpus are expertly mixed with the love, fear, and criticism of a time when there wasn’t a care in the world and “the pictures” could transport you away to a perfect world. 

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